Chalk Art, Illustrations, Digital Painting, and Cartoons by Artist Eric Maruscak

The New York Comic Con has come and gone, and I completed my Yu-Gi-Oh! chalk mural in approximately 28 hours. My fingers and back are killing me, but the above time lapse video shows how the artwork turned out, so to me it was all worth it.

The New York Comic Con is just around the corner. I’ll be there right at the main entrance creating this years chalk mural for 4Kids Entertainment, Toonzaki.com and the 10th Anniversary of Yu-Gi-Oh! Check out the time lapse video above as I draw out the 6 hour sketch to see just how crazy-detailed this thing is going to be. See you at the show!

So it has been three weeks since PAX Prime in Seattle Washington, and I’ve been so crazy busy that I’ve yet to post any of the photos from the convention. Well, the time has come to correct that oversight. The Penny Arcade Expo is an amazing show, and probably the closest thing to heaven on earth if you are into video games, board games, role-playing games… or just about any other form of game entertainment.

Here is the short time lapse video I made of my ESPN XP Cross Platform Marketing 3D chalk art mural made on September 1st and 2nd at Lake Compounce Amusement Park in Bristol, Connecticut. This was a tough gig as it averaged 95 degrees during the 11 hours I was working on this. However, everyone involved was amazing to work with and I had a fantastic time.

I received a call from the Pandora Group, a marketing company out of New York City who asked if I could travel to Bristol, Connecticut and make one of my 3D chalk murals for an ESPN event at Lake Compounce Amusement Park. ESPN rents out the entire park for a day and invites 3,000 to 5,000 employees and guests to an end-of-the-summer picnic. Even though this bumped right up against another show that started the very next day on the other side of the country, it sounded like a great time so I agreed. Little did I know that the beginning of September would decide to throw us a little mid-July heat wave for the two days I would be working on this mural.

…and here it is, the full time lapse from my 33 hour Clone Wars chalk mural at Star Wars Celebration V in Orlando Florida! You can watch this embed (kinda small) or simply click on the video to watch it larger on youtube; best viewed at 480p. Enjoy folks.

Last weekend I appeared at Star Wars Celebration V in Orlando Florida, and it was an amazing show. Being a life-long Star Wars fan, it was a dream come true when I was asked to be a part of this fantastic event with one of my chalk murals. That excitement multiplied when I was informed by Lucasfilm that I would be unveiling character art for Season 3 of The Clone Wars that had never been seen before.

Hey everyone, just wanted to put a quick post up because I know a number of you are looking for the time lapse video of my Star Wars Celebration Clone Wars chalk mural from last weekend. Well, the video is edited together and done… and it looks great. I am super excited and so happy with how it all came out, I am now just waiting on permission to post the piece which will hopefully come very soon!

A quick post of a great video put together by Dave West of Comic Book University. This was taken at C2E2 in Chicago just after I had finished the Alex Ross chalk mural. That was 23 hours of hard work, so forgive the fact that I look kind of tired in this. But other than my appearance Dave did a FANTASTIC job, and must be a wizard when it comes to editing because I don’t sound like the complete moron I usually do. Thanks again Dave.

I am constantly being confused with artist Julian Beever. If you’ve received one of those very popular forwarded e-mails full of amazing 3D chalk drawings, he is the one mostly responsible for the images. Kurt Wenner is the second most famous 3D artist and some of his work often gets mixed in there and credited to Mr. Beever, but rest assured these are two different and exceptionally skilled artists. Being confused with these incredible masters is certainly flattering, but over time it can border on the precipice of becoming slightly annoying when people constantly think you are someone else.

The George F. Johnson Library has asked me to do a number of chalk art sidewalk drawing classes over the years, and recently wanted me to come to a Summer Reading event called the Splish Splash Reading Bash to create some artwork for the kids. I decided to use this as another chance to practice a 3D anamorphic chalk drawing as immediately an image of a cartoon fish came to mind, so I sketched up a quick concept of a hole in the sidewalk filled with water, and a lounging fish with his favorite book on the ground beside him.

So just last week I completed my most recent session in a series of summer sidewalk chalk art classes at the George F. Johnson Library. Once again, as always seems to happen, we had a number of beautiful sunny days followed by rain and thunderstorms predicted on the day of my class. Fortunately we decided to ignore the forecast and go for it anyway, and wouldn’t you know it the rain held off all day (besides for two specific drops that hit my arm) and the class was a success!

My last post was on my 2007 library chalk art summer class, so here are some images from the 2008 session. For this year the class was moved to a shadier spot behind the library where the sidewalk was divided into nice even squares along the back drive. Once again I used comic book art as the subject matter for my demonstration mural, this time it was an Ed McGuinness illustration of The Incredible Hulk. I completed about 90% of the image before the students arrived, then worked with them on their chalk drawing technique over the next three hours.

For several years I have been teaching the art of street painting to children and young teens at summer classes for the George F. Johnson Library in Upstate New York. If they are working from an existing photograph or drawing, I show them how to grid their reference image and match it to a larger grid on the pavement in order to keep proportions consistent. I demonstrate the proper use of color, from applying the lightest chalk tones first to the darkest colors as they complete the piece, always putting black down last. We work on blending the chalk, the use of lighting to create form and shadows, and special techniques to deal with the rough sidewalk surface.

Here is my second "Almost Daily Sketch" of an obvious riff on Frankenstein’s monster. Sometimes I like to see how far I can stretch, pull or exaggerate parts of an illustration while keeping it just within the bounds of visual acceptability. I had the idea to take Frankenstein’s head and blow it up as HUGE as I could… then blow it up a little bit more.